<p>Star file photo</p><p>The Pacific Coast Pipeline site, a former oil refinery east of Fillmore that is being cleaned up, does not pose a health risk to the community, according to a federal agency.</p>

The former oil refinery east of Fillmore does not pose a health hazard and is not likely to pose one in the future, according to the federal agency that studies toxic substances and their health risks.

The Pacific Coast Pipeline site, now owned by Chevron, was an oil refinery for the first half of the 20th century and a pumping station for the second half. The 55-acre property was left with lead and other contaminants in the soil and benzene, a cancer-causing chemical, in the groundwater. Chevron is now in the final stages of a cleanup overseen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program, and the company is seeking city permits to build an industrial park on the property.

A few years ago, in response to concerns from Fillmore residents, the EPA asked the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry to analyze the health risks associated with the property. A draft of the agency’s report was released last month and presented at a public meeting on Wednesday at Mountain Vista Elementary School in Fillmore. It covers the period from 2011 to 2013 and also looks at the proposed future uses of the site.

The report has three main findings:

n First, the ATSDR found that dust near the site sometimes exceeded state air quality standards during the 2011-13 cleanup phase. The dust levels weren’t high enough to be dangerous to healthy people, but they could pose health risks to people with asthma, emphysema or other lung or heart conditions.

The agency could not determine, however, whether the dust came from the cleanup site. Dust can come from roads, construction, agriculture or just dry and windy conditions, and it is fairly common for communities in Southern California to exceed the state dust standards, said Tonia Burk, an environmental health scientist with the ATSDR.

“This is a dry, dusty area,” she said.

n The dust in the area, and the soil on the property, are unlikely to have exposed anyone to dangerous levels of lead or other toxins.

Last year, Chevron finished digging up soil contaminated with lead and other substances and buried it in two pits capped with layers of soil, clay and concrete. The ATSDR report indicates that Chevron’s cleanup crews did that without putting dangerous levels of those materials into the environment.

The ATSDR studied data from dust and wind tests from 2011 to 2013 and soil tests from 1980 to 2011 and found it unlikely that anyone living nearby would have come into contact with enough contaminants to cause any health problems.

n Building a light industrial park on the property, as Chevron is proposing, would not expose anyone to dangerous levels of lead or other substances.

“We believe the site will be used safely,” said Ben Gerhardstein, a public health adviser with ATSDR.

Since no one would live on the property, and it is unlikely that children would spend long hours there, no one would spend enough time there for the contaminants in the soil to pose any appreciable risk, Gerhardstein said.

After the cleanup, employees who work full-time on the property for 30 years might see their odds of developing cancer increase by about one case in one million people, Burk said.

“One in a million excess cancer risk is considered very low,” she said.

In 2013, an epidemiologist with the California Cancer Registry studied cancer rates in the eastern half of Fillmore from 1996 through 2009 and found no elevated risk for people living there.

Many people who live near the refinery property are convinced they have suffered health problems because of pollution, though. Christine Villasenor has lived nearby since 1973 and raised five children in the neighborhood. Two of her sons have had rare forms of stomach cancer, and one of them died from his cancer.

“What bothers me is that for a long time, the county of Ventura, the city of Fillmore, Chevron, the EPA, they didn’t really inform us about what was going on there,” she said. “My kids played up there all the time. There was no fence. We didn’t know it was contaminated.”

Villasenor said she’s happy with how the cleanup is going and accepts the report’s conclusions that there is no danger. She does not think anything else should be built on the property.

“I feel better now that I ever have about it,” she said. “I believe it’s cleaned up now.”